David Shingler's Stream of Consciousness

Do you ever get that feeling that you have lost sense of who you are? I kind of feel like that’s where I am at the moment. It’s a feeling that I’m all too familiar with but it hasn’t been around to visit for a while!

The other day I posted an image to Instagram. If you follow me over there then you know it’s all about music, specifically physical formats. But it wasn’t always like that. It used to just be about me. My thoughts, feelings, things I was getting up to and the cool stuff that I wanted to show off. Well this photo was the first one in a long time that just showed a picture of me. Nothing else, just me. It was refreshing.

A few years back I decided to make a few changes in my life to try and reclaim some lost time and indulge into the things that made me, well, me. Talk about being a fish out of water. I’d spent so long being stuck in one routine that I suddenly didn’t know how to cope in another. It’s OK though, I’m good at faking it and making it look like I know exactly what it going on! It turns out that that change wasn’t the right one and I needed to make another one but, baby steps first. I set myself a five year plan and in typical me fashion jumped feet first into it.

Roll on a couple of years, the pandemic hits and I find myself like most people looking to the world of social media for human interaction. It’s no secret that I like records and all of a sudden I was lost in a world known as the “Instagram Vinyl Community”. The rest is history. Out were the days of posting about my day to day life and in were pictures of records and audio equipment. I even archived a load of old posts that didn’t fit the narrative and started a new “personal” social media presence for all them kinds of things.

It’s gotten to the point where my online presence is all about music and that does not truly reflect the person who I am. Of course music is a huge part of my life. I love listening, collecting, playing, writing and performing. I’m even studying it! But that feeling of posting something different felt fresh and not stale, which is how I feel my feed is right now. I barely use Facebook, X or Threads because I feel like I just don’t have anything to say anymore. But in reality, I have so much to say and share with anyone that wants to read or listen. I host a podcast for goodness sake! I literally have something to share with the world every week that isn’t a record.

I’m coming to the end of my five year plan now and to be honest, the plan has changed along the way. This means that the plan won’t be complete as intended but extended to give me time to figure out who I am again. Hopefully I’ll get back into the routine of posting not just what I think is expected of me, but what I actually want to share with the world and if people want to come along for the ride then that would be most awesome. I mean, I’ll still be posting pictures of records because they’re cool as f*ck but hopefully you’ll get to see more of real me too.

Photo by Brett Jordan on Unsplash